Meet Matt Perdie: A Young Conservative Filmmaker

13 Apr, 2015 by Counter Cultured

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Matt Perdie is a Millennial who is passionate about making quality films focused on conservative ideas. His past projects include filming or editing conservative videos, interviews, and films. These include Justen Charters’ music video “Six Trillion Dollar Man,” Smart Girl Politics videos, Romans XIII (a conservative web series), Tea Party News Network CPAC interviews, Tea Party: The Documentary, Runaway Slave, Stand Down Benghazi, and Perdie Across America. You can view a summary of his work here.

Matt brings a fresh perspective to the conservative movement on film. He understands we can only best present our ideas to the American people by making them visually appealing and engaging. In fact, he wrote a blog post on his website about how conservatives can become better filmmakers, which is a great read.

I recently interviewed Matt to discuss why he got involved in politics and how he anticipates to make a difference in the conservative movement through filmmaking.

AMH: How did you get started in politics? What drew you to improving film in politics?

MP: After graduating from the Art Institute of Philadelphia for film, I felt that I needed to learn more about filmmaking, so when I was living in Philadelphia or NYC, I would go to Barnes and Noble everyday and read any filmmaking book I could get my hands on. In the process, I realized that I didn’t have any strong themes, moral convictions, or questions to raise in my films to give them purpose beyond pure entertainment. I wanted my films to do good in the world and have a positive impact on people, but what beliefs would systemically have a positive impact aside from the very obvious forms of common grace-inspired basic morality? (don’t kill, don’t steal, etc.)

This inspired an interest in politics and trying to understand everything. I quickly became a conservative libertarian and immediately felt the urgency to protect the posterity of this country. I got completely distracted from my original filmmaking goal, and in 2009, I ended up walking across the United States to “bring awareness to the dangers of massive government expansion and spending by both the previous and current administrations.”

As a video editor/cinematographer, I was hired on several video production gigs after the walk by various conservatives. I immediately saw a serious demand for exciting, thought-provoking and quality filmmaking that reflected the values and the questions that people with conservative or libertarian values had. As a filmmaker and as someone who was aware of many of the fiscal and tyrannical threats to this country, I felt a responsibility to contribute any filmmaking skills I had.

AMH: Tell me more about your past film projects. Which aspect of filmmaking do you enjoy the most? What have been your favorite projects? What are your working on right now?

MP: Ever since I begun the walk, much of my work has been on documentaries. During the walk, I took a four-week break in Atlanta, GA to help out Luke Livingston at Ground Floor Video with a documentary he was producing about the Tea Party–appropriately titled, Tea Party: The Documentary Film. I did the introduction along with a couple of the trailers. In the process, I had the pleasure of working with Pritchett Cotton, Jessica Levai, Joel Aaron, and other solid conservative filmmakers and writers.

About a year after the walk, I spent almost six months working with Luke and Pritchett on Runaway Slave, which was really a great experience. Pritchett is a wonderful director/editor with high skill and a great vision. Editing Runaway Slave with him was an absolute blast. It was also very rewarding experience to create a film that exposed the true source of tyrannical threats to the black community. That and I loved imitating C.L. Bryant’s epic voice. Still do if I get bored enough.

Read the rest of the interview at Counter Cultured here.